Oscar Cahén

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Oscar Cahén Life & Work by Jaleen Grove refugees, and an amputee, as in The Cripple (date unknown). In The Criminal (date unknown) the subject’s hanging head and dangling arms make him appear more pitiable than guilty, a position analogous to Cahén’s when Czech police had caught him with anti-Nazi broadcasting equipment, and later when he was deemed an “enemy alien” and interned during the Second World War. Cahén made four related one-metre-wide, black-ink line drawings. Each shows a soldier brandishing a lance with one arm, the other holding a shield. Heads take the form of medieval helmets, and massive, angular greaves protect calves. The block-like torsos lack detail, although each is given a prominent round codpiece. Bigger than life-size, Warrior was rendered savagely in about four swift passes: the first, a line drawing in black paint on raw canvas, followed by staining of the background and colouring of the chest, head, and greaves. Then the impasto flesh-tones of a vulnerably bloated, naked torso were laid in, a penis-less scrotum where the codpiece used to be. The powerful lance-wielding arms found in the drawings are now puny weak things—like the arm of the figure in The Cripple—holding only a knife in an upright ceremonial way, as the King does on a playing card. The shield oppressively squashes the figure’s shoulder, with an effeminate pale pink field crowding in from the left. This castrated figure in Warrior, its head now shattered as if by an explosion, is a testament to the victimhood of “warriors” (conscripted soldiers) forced to participate in conflicts not of their making. With the Second World War, the Korean War, and the Cold War so fresh, Warrior functions as an archetype as expressive of the period as any abstract painting. Cahén’s friends Walter Yarwood (1917–1996) and Harold Town (1924–1990) hung Warrior in pride of place on the title wall of the Oscar Cahén Oscar Cahén, Sketch for Warrior (050), 1955–56, ink on paper, 86.2 x 106.7 cm, private collection Memorial Exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto in 1959. Multi-part Mural for Imperial Oil Executive Office Building 1956 38
Oscar Cahén Life & Work by Jaleen Grove Multi-part Mural for Imperial Oil Executive Office Building 1956 Oscar Cahén, Multi-part Mural, Staff Lounge and Cafeteria of the Imperial Oil Executive Office Building, Toronto, 1956 Installation view of central panel from period photograph (cropped on the right) Acrylic on canvas, approximately 294.6 x 670.6 cm Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa In 1955 construction began on Imperial Oil’s executive offices at 111 St. Clair Avenue West, in Toronto, a landmark high-rise that accommodated 1,200 people. Three Toronto artists were commissioned to design murals for it: Oscar Cahén was awarded the eighth-floor cafeteria and lounge area, while York Wilson (1907–1984) and Sydney H. Watson (1911– 1981) painted the foyer and boardroom murals, 1 respectively. It was a highly prestigious assignment, for which Cahén was paid a princely $7,200 (a man working in manufacturing made about $5,000 a year). He completed the commission just days before his death on November 26, 1956. Cahén’s nature-derived, curvilinear design for three sections of wall and posts directly contrasts with the grey building’s mercenary International Modern structure with its even grid of windows. Intended to enliven this space of leisure, Cahén’s barb and 2 Installation view of panels Cahén painted for the staff lounge and cafeteria of the Imperial Oil Executive Office Building, Toronto, 1956 39
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